For anyone who may have missed them, previous portions of this multi-part coverage of the Harry O television series may be found here (Intro) and here (Season 1, Part 1).

The first half of the season was over and Harry O faced some changes. In Television Chronicles #10, executive producer Jerry Thorpe discussed the changes. To please ABC, the series tone was changed to more melodramatic. But Thorpe made a deal. He wanted the show to follow the path set by the first episode “Gertrude.” That meant more humor between the characters. Thorpe wanted to take advantage of Janssen’s untapped talent for humor.

In “The Last Heir,” we still have the same opening theme, but we soon see a hint of the changes to come. Harry is driving his car through the empty vast California desert … and the car makes it without a tow truck.

Harry is hired (he charges $100 a day plus expenses) by Jeff Mays (Clifford David), the nephew of rich, ill-tempered Letty (Jeanette Nolan) who lives alone in the middle of the desert. The nephew is worried she is crazy and will kill someone at the annual family meeting.

Once the entire family is there, their cars are disabled, stranding all in the desert waiting for the supply truck to make its weekly visit in six days. Then one by one, family members begins to die.

Next, “For Love Of Money” features a new musical arrangement of the series theme song with a more action feel. The visuals and graphics for the opening have been changed significantly. Gone are shots of Harry on the bus, walking, and sitting on his stranded boat. Now Harry is running, moving in chase scenes on foot, by boat and by car.

Harry travels to Los Angeles. A woman (Mariclare Costello) in Los Angeles needs help. Her family in San Diego hires Harry to act as go-between for her and her employer (Joe Silver).

Her boyfriend (Fred Beir) had convinced her to “borrow” $25,000 in bonds from her boss’ safe. She wants to return them but Harry finds the boyfriend and the bonds are gone. When the employer discovers half a million dollars of bonds are missing instead of just $25,000 he calls the cops.

While working on this case Harry rents an apartment in Santa Monica near the beach. His neighbor is a young beautiful stewardess Betsy (Katherine Baumann). Harry’s manners have not changed and he is blunt and grumpy around Betsy who mothers him. Betsy has a boyfriend Walter we will never see but enjoy Harry’s fear-inspired descriptions of him.

The mystery, as with most of this group of episodes, is unremarkable with more attention paid to action and characters than clues. The bullet in Harry’s back disappears allowing for more fights and chases.

This episode also introduces Harry (and us) to Lieutenant K.C. Trench and his quiet sidekick Sergeant Roberts (Paul Tulley). There is an on air chemistry between Janssen and Zerbe that is magic from the very beginning. The two feed off the other, not only as actors, but the characters do as well. It is obvious both respect, like and trust the other.

San Diego’s Lieutenant Manny Quinlain was played well by the talented Henry Darrow, but both the character and the actor’s style were too similar to Harry and Janssen. The conflict between Harry and Trench gave the series its humor and made the series more entertaining to watch.

Quinlain played straight man to Harry, while Trench had his own sense of humor. Trench was given this quality due to the underrated character of Sergeant Roberts. Roberts existed as a straight man for Harry and Trench, anchoring the scene as the PI and cop playfully had at it to the delight of the viewers.

In “Confetti People,” we watch Jack (John Rubinstein) shoot and kill his drunken artist brother (Scott McKay) who was beating his wife (Diana Hyland). Betsy finds Jack wandering on the beach and brings him to Harry, who is still in Santa Monica for some unknown reason, and convinces Harry to help Jack.

Harry calls the cops and takes Jack back to the murder scene only to find Jack’s sister –in-law and still alive brother denying anything happened. Jack had just been released from a mental hospital, so everyone writes it off except Harry who is worried about his client.

It is interesting to compare how this melodrama handled mental illness when compared to the nourish drama of the San Diego episode “Shadows At Noon.”

Trench learns as we have, “Orwell, you have a way of getting involved with some pretty bizarre people.”

“Sound Of Trumpets” gives Harry a reason to stay in Los Angeles. Harry learns they have torn down his San Diego home to put up a high-rise. He likes the people and the area so he follows Betsy and Walter and moves to a beach house in Santa Monica. Harry’s unfinished boat, “The Answer” joins him at the beach house. Harry finds a new mechanic, Clarence (Hal Williams) for his car.

Lovers of Jazz music will enjoy this story of a former great horn man Art Sully (Julius Harris) just out of prison with a secret someone doesn’t want him to live to tell.

Harry saves his life when Art falls off the pier. When Art disappears with Harry’s car, Harry is back using the bus and not happy about it. Some great jazz and R&B music highlight the episode that has a more active Harry fighting and chasing bad guys.

“Silent Kill” was an “issue” episode, but the heavy-handed new style of the series weakened the message. Harry agreed to help a deaf woman (Kathy Lloyd) clear her deaf mute husband (James Wainwright) of setting a fire that killed three people. Despite a script drowning in pathos, director Richard Lang effectively illustrated the struggles of the deaf by turning off the sound and forcing the viewer to see through the deaf mute’s eyes.

“Double Jeopardy” is another “issue” episode that would have worked better without the melodrama. Harry witnesses a murder and sees a young man, Tom (Kurt Russell) leaving the scene. Tom is arrested, but let go for lack of evidence.

In an ironic twist the female victim’s father (Will Kuluva) is an ex-mobster who was successful in San Diego for over twenty years before retiring to Los Angeles. The justice system he had manipulated to stay out of prison seems unfair to him now as he watches the man he believes killed his daughter go free. So he hires some men to kill Tom.

Harry believes Tom is innocent and tries to keep him alive long enough to find the real killer.

Exit Betsy and Walter to Hawaii as a married couple. Enter Harry’s most remembered neighbor, Sue Ingram (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) and her large dog Grover (who hates Harry).

“Lester” features our first meeting of Lester Hodges, wannabe criminologist and Harry Orwell fan boy, who would return in the second season. College student Lester notifies the police about a missing woman. His rich family learns of it and sends a lawyer to protect Lester.

The lawyer hires Harry. Every clue Harry finds points to Lester as the killer of the woman. The lawyer is not pleased, but Lester can’t stop smiling. The last scene between Harry and Lester is a Harry O classic.

In “Elegy For A Cop,” Manny travels to Los Angeles in secret to retrieve his niece (Kathy Lloyd) who is a drug addict. What happens next has Harry going after a drug broker (Sal Mineo) in one of the most dramatic stories of the entire first season.

Howard Rodman’s script and David Janssen’s talent were the reasons this episode worked despite the fact it was created for budget reasons and recycled several scenes from the original pilot Such Dust As Dreams Are Made On.

In this episode we learn both of Harry’s parents were dead and he has no brothers or sisters. All he has left is his friends.

WARNING: SPOILERS. FEEL FREE TO SKIP DOWN TO EPISODE “STREET GAMES.”

The new local drug broker uses Manny’s niece to set him up as a dirty cop that gets killed in a payoff. The broker shoots Manny and leaves him for dead with “bribe” money in Manny’s pocket. Before he dies, Manny is able to mail the money to Harry.

According to the article in Television Chronicles #10, this episode was one of the first times a regular character on a TV series was killed off. The series Nichols (NBC, 71-72) had done it, and a month after this episode aired, Henry Blake would die in M*A*S*H.

Poor Manny, he had to die to get a backstory. He was 37 and married with children. Both of his parents were alive, as well as his brother Jesus, unknown number of sisters, and his niece.

END OF SPOILERS.

In “Street Games,” a waitress (Claudette Nevins) at a place Harry eats hires him to find her sixteen-year-old daughter (Maureen McCormick). Mom has reason to worry, as her daughter is a junkie and now on the run after witnessing the local dealer gun down her boyfriend. What follows is the expected twists and turns until we reach a happy ending.

Harry O’s first season offered a wide range of quality programs, from the comedy mystery of “Gertrude” to the nourish drama of “Eyewitness” to the character comedy of “Lester” to the emotional drama of “Elegy For A Cop.”

Yet it would be the relationship between PI Harry Orwell and Santa Monica cop Lieutenant Trench that elevated this series to one of television’s most fondly remember shows.

The ratings for the second half increased from the first half of the season. Harry O ending the season tied for 38th place (out of 70).

So next: Season Two.

NOTE: Thanks to Randy Cox for a copy of Television Chronicles #10 and the article by Ed Robertson.

It is nice to see Warner Archive finally release the first season and first pilot (SUCH DUST DREAMS ARE MADE ON) on official DVD.

But did they have to release it the week of Comic Con when most of the entertainment media was busy covering “big” stories. One week before or one week after and this release would have got more attention.

Re: Continuity problems. Making things up as you go along was possible then, but what with the Internet and lots more attention being paid to them today, I don’t think shows would dare to try stuff like that now, would they?

#4. Kathy Lloyd played Manny’s junkie niece in “Elegy For A Cop” and three episodes before she played the deaf wife in “Silent Kill.” I suspect part of that was “Elegy” using part of the first pilot, but back then I wonder if anyone noticed or cared.

It was not uncommon for certain series to like and reuse actors for different roles, Quinn Martin was one that had his favorites.

Today, once an actor has appeared on any series, he or she won’t be recast in that series again.

The arc shows must have a strong continuity or fans howl, but even the episodic TV series tries to establish and be loyal to characters’ backstories.

The producers and writers of REMINGTON STEELE used by BOOK OF STEELE (an informal writer and episode guide) for such continuity challenges, especially with plots. By the end of the series the guide was over 100 pages.

In the 60/70s, a lot of ITC series such as THE SAINT or THE CHAMPIONS would have the same actors turning up during the same series. Since they were film series, and thus ran around 6 months of the year, it was easier to conceal this (the absence of video/dvd/skyplus also helped). I’ve heard that this was partly due to directors having a sort of unofficial ‘repertory theatre’ arrangement with various actors. They tended to be hired whenever the director was. If they were versatile and reliable it meant that the director had one less thing to worry about during the quick shooting schedule.

I recall seeing an episode of the old 50s Richard Greene ROBIN HOOD series where the same actor played two different speaking roles in THE SAME EPISODE. The first time that I saw it I assumed that it was part of the plot, but it was just cost cutting. They obviously thought that if he put on a moustache, chain-mail armour and deeper voice that no-one would notice it was the same man…

I’ve just watched the first pilot, thanks to the set of first season DVDs that got here yesterday. It’s darker in tone than most PI shows that were on around the same time. It is, in fact, very well done. It could almost pass for a series being made today.

Which does not mean that it’s humorless, not at all, but it’s a darker kind of humor, generated by Harry’s grumpiness and generally bad disposition.

Which would be you, too, if you’d to retire from the police force with a bullet at the base of your spine.

Which is the beginning premise of the first pilot. Which is why it sounds so strange to have it ignored as the series went on!

This whole thing about not reusing actors is a development of only the past few years.

Most TV producers, going back to the beginnings of the medium, used the same actors repeatedly, often in different roles. The reasons should be obvious: doing between 26-39 new episodes a season, you had to start doubling or tripling up eventually.
Five-a-week stripping of shows was a long way off; you saw any given show once a week and that was it.
Also: early filmed TV shows were “little B movies”. Those who watched them in first run no doubt recognized the many character actors they’d seen in second features over the years when they started turning up on Highway Patrol, Rin Tin Tin, Soldiers Of Fortune, and however many others you can name.
That was one of the ways I got hooked on TV Guide: I would go through the new issue every week and find the names of the actors who pass from show to show – and back again – sometimes more than once.
As to “arc series”: the first of those were the daytime soaps – and (at least in my case) this same principle applied. In this section of the TV world, numerous examples abound of actors who were killed off their shows, but were so popular that they were brought back – sometimes the old character was brought back to life, sometimes a different character was created – and the fans loved it (and I know this because I was one of ’em). (It’s not so much different from the situation where an actor leaves a role he’s played for years and is promptly replaced by a different actor – who sometimes looks almost nothing like the guy he’s replacing.)

The kind of “continuity dweeb” described here is a comparatively new addition to the scene, and frankly I don’t believe that it is as widespread a presence as some make it out to be.
Putting it another way – nobody’s that dumb.

Suppose for the moment that Anthony Zerbe had appeared in an earlier Harry O episode, most likely as a villain.
Would this have disqualified him for consideration when the Trench character was created?
Any reasonably intelligent viewer (such as the ones who congregate here) would of course answer “Hell No!”
Even now.
Even in an “arc series”.
And I’ll leave it to others of you who can recall more recent examples of this to flood the post with them.

I remember some viewers were unhappy about the most recent NERO WOLFE series, in which the secondary players in each episode were played by the same band of actors, a kind of repertory company, if you will. The idea that an actor could play more than one role on a series was new to them.

But the fact that it bothered them is maybe an indicator that it isn’t done very much any more.

Which doesn’t mean, as you say, Mike, that it isn’t done. I’m struggling to remember a series in which a character who ended up being a recurring role was played by someone who’d been on the show before. It may have been NCIS, but even if it was, right now I’m coming up blank.

I’ve just done some searching around on IMBD, and while I haven’t found any examples as obvious as Dennis Franz on Hill Street Blues, it took me less than a minute to come up with Gerry Becker. He’s an actor I’m sure very few people know by name, but he played three different characters on LAW & ORDER before playing a recurring character three times later on.

Three small and mostly anonymous parts before the recurring one, I’d have to guess, but I’m sure there’s also only a handful of actors around who have what you want when you want them.

Becker also played two other characters on LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, and two more on NYPD BLUE.

During the seventies and eighties, the British Sci-Fi series DR.WHO and BLAKE’S SEVEN used actors in one-off guest starring roles and then, later on, in regular starring roles. I recall one of the B7 regulars saying in an interview that during the 70s she had appeared in a European Sherlock Holmes series. She played one character, and then turned up later in the run as another, with very little difference in make-up. She asked the producers if the audience would mind, and was told that their viewers actually responded very positively. Their attitude was much closer to a theatre audience, who liked to see their favourites in as many different roles as possible.

Over at Classic TV History blog, Stephen Bowie did a great interview with actor Robert Pine who had been part of Quinn Martin’s actor favorites. He mentions in was in a minor role in the first year episode of NCIS and how that means he can’t be cast again in that series.

Despite some reports, “The Last Heir” was not filmed in San Diego, but instead in Burbank and somewhere in the California desert. Harry talks about his home in San Diego, but we don’t see it. The fact the theme had not yet changed and this was shot without regular series sets or locations hints the series needed time before the switch.

Add it took until episode17 of 22 until Harry had his Los Angeles beach house and one can understand why some of the stories didn’t fit the new style well.

Funny thing is, given his photo in front of me, I’m sure I’d never be able to put his name to it. (Maybe the series or character he might have been playing, but not his name.)

He’s right about only the one appearance on NCIS, way back in 2003. But he was on MURDER, SHE WROTE five times as five different characters. Different shows, different rules, with repeat appearances such as we’re discussing probably being done less often than before on all of them.

So far I’ve managed to watch the first pilot from the new set of DVDs. The second pilot was released earlier and separately. I’ll have to skip that for now, and start the first season itself, but so far I haven’t.

Thanks, Michael, for undigging and pointing out all of this information about the series as it developed. It’s all extremely interesting!

Just watched an episode of RICHARD DIAMOND from the late 1950s. Diamond’s fee was $100 a day plus expenses (the same as Harry). Considering Rockford was making $200 a day plus expenses, you’d think Harry would charge more than the 50s TV PI rate. Money really didn’t mean much to Orwell.

Hi, Michael! Thanks so much for your season 1 part 2 review as well as your earlier season 1 review. I really enjoy reading your comments on this wonderful David Janssen TV series. Do still plan to review season 2?

Yes, I will be doing more about HARRY O. I am still recovering from glaucoma surgery and my time reading and watching has been limited. I took advantage of this place’s Labor Day holiday and Steve’s own health recovery to get ahead with blogs that didn’t require 22 hours of TV watching.

I plan to start watching HARRY O Season 2 this week and I hope to have my review up in October. I am not sure how many more posts it will take to finish HARRY O, as not only do I have Season Two, but the behind the scenes information from TELEVISION CHRONICLES magazine to cover.

The bullet in Harry Orwell’s back did not disappear, despite the fact that I have read in several places that he had an operation to remove it. In the second-season episode “Shades,” Harry tells a character played by Lou Gossett, Jr. that the bullet is still there. I think Harry started running more after the retooling of the premise simply to appease the network’s desire for standard crime drama action, and they quietly ignored the fact that the bullet was there.

With regards to actors being used over and over again, the leader in this field by far would have to be Jack Webb, who used actors multiple times over on Dragnet and Adam-12. I think it was because of his love for the TelePrompTer…he wanted actors who were comfortable with it and giving the cold, flat reading that he liked in his shows.

Another great example involved the casting of the original Law & Order: Special Victims Unit crew. L&O fans are among the most obsessive of fans, and they will notice certain casting items. Thusly, there was a major outcry when Chris Meloni, who’d played a villain on the main Law & Order, was cast as one of the main detectives on SVU. There was a lot of the ‘how dare you’ type of letters written to Dick Wolf, but eventually the viewers warmed up to Meloni and thusly were saddened to see him go.

And yet another Law & Order cast change that pissed off the obsessed fans: Annie Parisse first appeared on the show as the defendant in a murder trial, so you can imagine how the super-obsessed fans reacted when she came on board as the latest second Assistant D.A. Her character never caught on, and I guess some fans were happy when she was killed off…I mean, LITERALLY killed off, shot to death, opening the door for yet another ‘prosecutie’ to join the series.

BARNEY MILLER was an adherent of the rep-company approach. Steve Landesberg and Ron Carey both appeared as perps before assuming their regular roles as Dietrich and Levitt, respectively. And some character actors were brought in over and over again to play different characters: Philip Sterling, Don Calfa, Phil Leeds, Peggy Pope, Oliver Clark, Florence Halop, and Rod Colbin each appeared in half-a-dozen episodes or more, never playing the same role twice.

Also — and I can’t think of another example of a series that did this offhand — some recurring parts were played by actors who still appeared as part of the rep company. Alex Hentelhoff, a recurring character as sleazy lawyer Arnold Ripner, actually played another completely unrelated role *between* two of Ripner’s appearances! Same thing happened with George Murdock, who played the odious Internal Affairs guy Lt. Scanlon — between two of Scanlon’s appearances, he played a completely different character.